II. TAXACEÆ.
Slightly resinous trees and shrubs, producing when cut vigorous stump shoots, with fissured or scaly bark, light-colored durable close-grained wood, slender branchlets, linear-lanceolate entire rigid acuminate spirally disposed leaves, usually appearing 2-ranked by a twist in their short compressed petioles and persistent for many years, and small ovoid acute buds. Flowers opening in early spring from buds formed the previous autumn, diœcious or monœcious, axillary and solitary, surrounded by the persistent decussate scales of the buds, the male composed of numerous filaments united into a column, each filament surmounted by several more or less united pendant pollen-cells; the female of a single erect ovule, becoming at maturity a seed with a hard bony shell, raised upon or more or less surrounded by the enlarged and fleshy aril-like disk of the flower; embryo axile, in fleshy ruminate or uniform albumen; cotyledons 2, shorter than the superior radicle. Of the ten genera widely distributed over the two hemispheres, two occur in North America.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN GENERA.
Filaments dilated into 4 pollen-sacs united into a half ring; seeds drupe-like, green or purple, ripening at the end of the second season; albumen ruminate.1. [Torreya.] Filaments dilated into a globose head of 4—8 connate pollen-sacs; seeds berry-like, scarlet, ripening at the end of the first season; albumen uniform.2. [Taxus.]